Man At A Bar
by Veterization
Summary: WARNING: Slash Light/L Pre-Death-Note OneShot “So…” Light began, his tongue tracing patterns on the edge of his glass, “what are you doing here, mysterious stranger? You seem a tad… out of place.” One drunken Light meets an L he has yet to meet one night.


_Disclaimer_: Insert witty disclaimer here! I don't own it, kthxbye.

A seventeen-year-old Light Yagami sat sulkily in the darkest corner of the pub he was situated in, sipping at a drink he was too young to have.

Furled up in his hand in an angry little wad of paper, Light's results from his recent geometry test suffered from deep creases they did nothing to earn. Light's fingernails created prominent marks in the paper as he downed the rest of the alcohol he didn't remember the impressive name of. All he knew was that once the glass was placed in the light it vaguely resembled the color brown. He hadn't been paying much attention.

Light wasn't all too amused by the plummet that his arithmetic grades would soon be taking. Normally he wouldn't be concerned; within the next week Light would diligently work up his grade with the effort a trained chef might need to cook macaroni and cheese, but he had a small issue with pride. He could imagine his cheeks being tainted with the color of roses and the tips of his ears flaring as he sheepishly handed his hopeful mother his grades.

The bartender tilted his head suggestively at Light before waving the pitcher of alcohol at him in proposal. Light nodded moodily and impatiently held his glass up to the ceiling. The waiter refilled it wordlessly.

Light didn't know _why_ he was even brooding so much. He was a bright kid. He was probably the most intelligent person in his whole school. Not to mention that he knew how to use Photoshop, and his crudely made grade card could easily be refined. He slammed his fist on the table before once again downing his drink. It burned his throat like an explosive canon trickling down his esophagus, but the drinks Light had already drunk numbed the pain considerably.

He was about to get up from his table and stumble with a significant intoxicated stagger to his step to the door of the bar when he saw another form waver in the shadows next to him. He reached for the chair next to his to lift him up from his seat only to feel the man next to him also reach for the chair. An immediate rush of dizziness flooded Light's inebriated brain as blood poured through his body like a waterfall.

"Excuse me," the man said, stepping slightly out of the shadows. From the ray of light splaying on the man's face, Light detected an abnormally enlarged eye and remarkably black iris. With his face mostly eclipsed in the darkness, Light would almost say that he had soft, feminine like features, and that was enough for him to hit on the petite man.

"Excuse me," the man repeated, as if not sure if Light had heard him or not, "are you using this chair?"

"Oh… right. That's taken. But this one," Light wormed his hand over to the empty seat vacated next to him and patted it suggestively, "is gonna be free all night long."

"Unless somebody sits in it."

Light sneered, but still, the aura of intoxication was too thick to be broken with indignance, so he pulled out the chair with a slight scrape of wood on wood. The stranger hesitated for a moment apprehensively before he sat himself on the seat and crouched on it.

Light didn't bother to question the man's ways of sitting. He let his index finger slowly circle around the rim of his cup in silence.

"You don't know my name." He told the man.

"Very true," the man nodded in agreement.

"I've known you for over fifty seconds and you don't know my name." Light reasoned.

The stranger was silent, "You don't have to share," he finally said, "the thing about strangers is that they're strange. It's best to be cautious."

"Fuck that," Light snapped, and sat up in his chair with a noticeably straighter spine, "Light Yagami."

The raven-haired man tilted his head curiously as Light introduced himself, "Sounds familiar, Yagami-kun. I believe I know your father."

"You!" Light balled his fist up into an incriminatingly pointing finger, "I don't know _your_ name!"

"Ryuzaki," the man mumbled, "my name is Ryuzaki. Stop pointing at people." The raven rearranged himself in his seat and scooted it away from the slurring Light. It would be apparent to even the most innocuous passerby that Ryuzaki was uncomfortable in his forced conversation with the drunk man sitting in the shadows, but Light was oblivious.

"So…" Light began, his tongue tracing patterns on the edge of his glass, "what are you doing here, mysterious stranger? You seem a tad… out of place."

Ryuzaki tilted his head slightly to the left at the term _mysterious stranger_ having just introduced his name to the young man but breezed by the thought, "So do you, Light Yagami," he observed, "from the way you are so easily intoxicated after what I can only assume are a mere four scotches…?"

Light knitted his brows together and examined his glass underneath the shine of the illumination, "Ah, so it is scotch," he nodded, "how do you know I've had four? Been watching me, have you?"

Ryuzaki lifted a thumb to the bartender, who was once again shaking his pitcher at Light invitingly.

"If that is what Yagami-kun wishes to believe, he is welcome to indulge in his obliviousness even though I must make it clear that it was not you I was watching," Ryuzaki stated, "I was observing the bartender and the way that his ways of offering drinks to people vary distinctly… he has been in the business long enough that he knows how to sell a drink, but there was only one customer he simply had to smile at to refill a glass… that would you, Yagami-kun. He shook his pitcher four times in your direction."

Light grunted gruffly and waved at the man behind the counter. He meandered his way over.

"Another drink, sir?"

"I insist that this man must decline further drinks, Mr. Bartender," Ryuzaki spoke for Light and promptly seized the younger man's drink, placing it upon the waiter's tray.

"Do you have a poison of your own, mister?" the waiter offered.

"Peppermint tea with copious amounts of sugar is poison enough, no?" Ryuzaki requested.

As the bartender scurried off, the raven returned his attention to Light.

"You took my drink, mysterious stranger."

"No, as a matter of fact, the waiter was the one who carried it away." Ryuzaki informed him.

"So… are you going to keep on reflecting the conversation or are you going to share why you're in a shady bar?" Light inquired, cocking an eyebrow.

"I am waiting for someone, Yagami-kun. If I do not appear to be in place at this bar, I can assure you that my companion is most suited to blend into this crowd of inebriated fools."

"How extraordinarily kind of you," Light planted a significant amount of sarcastic emphasis on the 'extraordinarily' in his sentence, drawing out every syllable as if he was saying them for the first time.

The waiter placed a steaming cup of fragrant tea on the table. L nodded in acknowledgment to the refreshment and began pouring packet after packet of sugar into the drink.

"I'd be incorrect to say that you have been silent, Mr. Mysterious Stranger, but you still are very ambiguous in all of your responses."

"Oh?" Ryuzaki ventured, sipping at his mug.

"A normal person would have shared interesting things or perhaps even a name if one is so lucky when you mentioned meeting a friend in the bar."

"It would be rude of me to divulge information of someone who is not myself. I do not possess the rights to share such things." He dismissed.

Light sneered and pointed at Ryuzaki, the tip of his finger nudging the raven's nose, "Right there! Another conveniently vague answer!" He accused.

Ryuzaki moved his chair out of arm's reach and tweaked his nose. "Well, if it is convenient to be vague then vague I will be."

"That's not what I meant, damn mysterious stranger!" Light snarled. "If you won't divulge other's information then at least divulge your own!"

"There is nothing to share, Yagami-kun," Ryuzaki shrugged, "Nothing you will remember in the morning in the first place. You seem very easily inebriated."

"You piss me off," Light rolled his eyes and rapped his knuckles against the table, "I could do all kinds of things to you, man."

"I'm sure you could." If Ryuzaki felt threatened, he kept it all beneath a well built shield that kept his exterior miles away from his interior.

"I could make you fall in love with me… like that," Light slurred, snapping his fingers sloppily. He rested his head on his palm, pressing his elbow to the table tiredly.

"How would you go about doing that, Yagami-kun?"

"I 'ave my tricks," Light winked through a hiccup, "some – some unfortunately misguided individuals say that their words is all that it takes to gain someone's affection…"

"And you are not among those unfortunately misguided individuals?" Ryuzaki challenged.

"Indeed I am not!" There was an aura of drunken indignance tainting Light's voice, "The secrets are simple." He stood up from his chair and raked a hand through his hair.

"Is Yagami-kun putting on a show for the whole pub to see?"

"Not tonight, unlucky them," Light winked suggestively at Ryuzaki before he began, "First is a swagger to the hips… unnoticeable if not done right but overly brazen if performed shamelessly!" Light swayed his waist to an imaginary beat and hummed along quietly. Ryuzaki sipped silently at his cup.

"Then it's the tone of voice… a subtle deepening makes anyone seem appealing by at least eight times more."

"Where does the ever-so-random eight come from?" Ryuzaki interrupted with a curious lift of the eyebrow.

"Do not question me, mysterious stranger," Light snapped, continuing on with a small glower in the raven's direction, "and what seals the deal is a little move I have taken the fashion to calling the Toffee Stare… it's wildly notorious in my own mind, cupcake."

"Cupcake?" Ryuzaki questioned, his hands furling around the handle on his cup.

"Ignore that," Light brushed aside, "anyway, the Toffee Stare! You have to lock eyes someone. And by doing so I incandescently hook them in to my infamous charm and I never look away until someone or something else catches my attention, and when they do, I tear my eyes away as if it was glued to their face like warm, Sunday morning toffee." Light smacked his lips as he finished his instructions and sat down.

"I do like toffee, Light Yagami." Ryuzaki admitted, "but I must confess that this sounds utterly ridiculous. By doing this _toffee stare_ you turn your perfectly normal watching into a glorified stalker's glare."

Light huffed, crossing his arms, "That's a bold thing to say, mysterious stranger," he told him, "I must say I wouldn't be Light Yagami if I never backed down from a challenge and I believe you just challenged me in the subtlest of ways."

"What is your plan, Yagami-kun?"

"I shall demonstrate my grade-A seduction on the closet subject." Light scanned the dark bar with narrowed eyes as he searched for his guinea pig.

"I pity the soul you will choose for your experiment."

"Then it shall be you, mysterious stranger!" Light exclaimed, arms wide in triumph as he grinned down upon Ryuzaki. Ryuzaki sighed, throwing more sugar into his mug.

"Watch this, smirky, and try to not molest me in the public eye." Light tutted smugly and threw a pair of smoky bedroom eyes in Ryuzaki's direction, who merely raised his eyebrows.

"I am trying very hard to suppress my laughter, Yagami-kun. This is absolutely insane." He admitted, a small smile creeping onto his impassive lips.

"Bullshit!" Light barked, and deepened his gaze while he edged closer to the raven. L remained unfazed. "Watch this." He hummed in a husky tone before he grabbed Ryuzaki's chin with his thumb and index finger and gently brushed his fingers along his cheek.

"I think you're molesting me before I am you, Light Yagami."

"Shut up, you damn asexual! How can you still not want to ravish me??" he demanded, his inebriated acrimony getting the best of him. "The Toffee never fails!" he slowly and deliberately tore his eyes from Ryuzaki's. The older man did have to admit that it resembled someone trying to unstick themselves from a gooey batter of toffee or freshly mixed fudge, but as that contemplation whizzed into his brain, Ryuzaki got the sudden impulse to shower off.

"That was certainly a Toffee Stare, I must say. But you have simply managed to irk me instead of turning me on."

"You _really_ do piss me off," Light hissed.

"Then I have won this challenge, mm?" Ryuzaki inquired. When Light shook his head firmly, Ryuzaki tutted, "This is useless, Yagami-kun. It's much better to be without sense than misapply it like you do."

"I'm not misapplying anything, mysterious stranger," Light said, nodding, his grip on Ryuzaki's chin tightening considerably, "watch me win."

Without further ado, Light leant in and captured the raven's lips with his own. There was his hip swagger, his macho-ized voice, and his Toffee Stare, but he had never mentioned his secret option number four, which he whipped out at desperate times such as these.

His natural quality for sticking his tongue down people's throats.

And them liking it.

Smiling into the kiss, Light's hands wormed their way down to grip Ryuzaki's shirt and wrinkled it up in his fingers before he nibbled on his lower lip hungrily. Now he wasn't pulling away from sticky toffee, he was _eating it_. And Ryuzaki was some of the best toffee he'd ever tasted.

Licking in an almost cat-like way at the roof of Ryuzaki's mouth, Light moaned greedily and climbed from his own chair onto the older man's to straddle his waist. He was roughly pushed away at the sudden contact and was promptly catapulted onto his bottom. Light crashed onto the floor and skidded into his chair dazedly, his alcohol-soaked brain spinning.

"This time you're the loser," Light slurred, "…mysterious stranger." He added the last part woozily.

"Yagami-kun," Ryuzaki growled, "that was _not_ one of your tactics as I recall. You _cheat_."

"No I dinnit," Light denied immediately, a wide smirk spreading across his lips, "_you_ pulled_ me_ in!"

Ryuzaki felt his left eye twitch at the accusation, "Excuse me?" he challenged the younger man. Light grinned.

"You _want_ me, mysterious horny stranger!"

"Horny??" the raven repeated incredulously.

Light rolled his eyes, scooting his chair closer once more and capturing Ryuzaki's lips in his own. Although drunk he was, he was certainly still an open receiver to pleasure and with a satisfied moan he twirled around locks of Ryuzaki's choppy hair.

"Mmmm," Light purred, humming softly against the older man's mouth as he pulled away and licked his lips. "You didn't push me away this time."

"You're a drunk, incoherent and cheating minor."

"I love it when you talk dirty, mysterious stranger," Light stood up from his chair with Ryuzaki's hand firmly entwined around his.

"I have no say in this, do I?" Ryuzaki asked, his dark eyes drooping.

"Nope," Light nodded, "And, uh… just so you know," he pointed to the chair Ryuzaki had been occupying, "that wasn't my chair after all."

Ryuzaki looked thoroughly unamused.


End file.
